Filmed between 1971 and 1976, Ed Pincus’s Diaries (1971–1976) is a landmark of personal nonfiction, tracing five years of marriage with Jane Pincus, co-author of Our Bodies, Ourselves, as they test the promises and pressures of an open relationship, and let the camera hold what love, freedom, and consequence leave behind.
Director: Ed Pincus
Runtime: 210
Fest Year: 2026
In 1971, Ed Pincus picked up a 16mm camera and began filming his own life. He would keep filming for five years. His wife Jane, co-author of Our Bodies, Ourselves; their two young children; the women with whom Ed had affairs; meals prepared, a puppy acquired, a child taken to the doctor for stitches. He shot it all, then left the footage untouched for five years before editing. The result, at over three hours, is a foundational work of personal nonfiction. Pincus, who co-founded MIT’s Film Section with Richard Leacock, was testing whether the feminist principle that the personal is political could hold up under the weight of his own domestic life. It could, and it couldn’t, and that tension is the film. Le Monde called Diaries an epic that redefines an art. Its influence runs directly through the Cambridge documentary tradition; Ross McElwee, Robb Moss, and generations of filmmakers at MIT and Harvard trace their practice back to this film. Presented by the Harvard Film Archive in a restored edition. (YF)